The life and letters of Benjamin Jowett, M. A., master of Balliol college, Oxford.

865-1870] The Loss of his Mother

407

he was summoned to Torquay, but too late to see his
mother, who had died the day before. Her death moved
him deeply, and called up many old memories. The
following passage from a sermon which he preached
a few years afterwards may be, to some extent, as the
Rev. W. H. Langhorne has suggested, a picture drawn
from recollections of his own family:'The thought of our childhood touches us when we remember
that we were once as they are now-surrounded by brothers
and sisters who have gone different ways in life: some to
distant lands, where they rest and will no more return to us;
and others, like ourselves, have been fighting the battle of life
here for twenty or thirty years or more, to rest like them
before long.
'The history of any family recalls many recollections known
to themselves only: of little acts of kindness done to one
another, and inseparable companionships, and old servants and
their rare devotedness and self-surrender: of some mistakes
and misunderstandings, too, which may have arisen out of
differences of character. We can see now how they might
have been avoided, but we could not place ourselves above
them at the time.
'The old family life, the house in which we dwelt, the
circle which met round the fire or the dinner-table, the very
books and furniture we used, are still present in the mind's eye,
and the memory of these is sweet to us. They are a sort of
Kingdom of Heaven in the past, and to some of us there seem
to be none who can look on us as others have.'
After this he spent what time he could at Torquay,
haunted by his mother's image, ruminating on old
memories, and finding the quiet of the bereaved household conducive to uninterrupted labour. 'I like this
place, at which I always do more and with less exertion
than anywhere else.'
His work proceeded as before, without check or
intermission. Returning from Torquay to Oxford on